This is a variation of an old blog I wrote on someone else’s site, but I think it’s a great reminder of our present situation.

Over one Christmas stay in LA, I was conversing with a Christian who exclaimed to me in utter disgust, “Can you believe Urbana got Bono from U2? Bono!??!!” I have to admit, as a knee jerk reaction, I was a little freaked out by her disdain for Bono. I happen to like U2. My wife LOVES U2 (no, she doesn’t love ‘you too’; she loves the band). Upon deeper meditation on the topic, I have come to my own conclusion. What you say about Bono says more about your Christianity than Bono. Hear me out please.

This week, Mike Huckabee has said some things that offended both Christians and non-Christians alike. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151195531403915 He basically observes that America has rejected God and we should not be surprised that we have gun violence. Certainly, America is not a Christian nation, and arguably, probably was never really one. The firestorm that follows causes a lot of very angry reaction. I’m not here to argue the right or wrong of Huckabee’s logic. Rather, the offense of his words, however good it is, has offended the community because of the context in which it was said. Words and context are important in preaching. We really need to think about language used in the pulpit and in our Christian vocabulary. Quite often, Christians can sweat a lot about the small stuff and miss the big picture. What then is the small stuff? Let me use U2’s Bono as our example.

I recall watching Rattle and Hum years ago, a documentary of a U2 tour. With musical movies like that, you’ve got to see it on big screen. Nothing less will do. I recall hearing the mesmerizing and “edgy” (no pun) guitar work with Bono’s aggressive lyrics. I recall being completely captured by the U2 spiritual “Love Rescued Me” or by the soulful B. B. King as he celebrated Christ in “When Love Comes to Town” or haunted by the creepy “Helter Skelter” and “All Alone in the Watchtower.” It’s all good.

One particular moment touched me deeply during a rendition of “Silver and Gold” when I heard Bono zealously shouted, “F… apartheid.” I hate to say it, but my heart echoed, “Hell, yeah!” So, like the naïve idealist that I was (still am), I went back and shared that touching moment with some of my Baptist friends in the Baptist church I was going to at the time (no offense against Baptists, but do please keep the fan mail to yourselves, OK?). The typical response they gave me was (get this!), “Bono said the F-word?” I couldn’t believe it. Black people were being oppressed for the color of their skin, and all these believers cared about was Bono’s F-word? The F-word is probably the only fitting word for the context at hand. Their response sums up for me the popular understanding of piety among evangelicals. In that encounter with such “pious” people, I had arrived in the religious twilight zone. In retrospect, I was surprised no one answered, “But Bono plays rock and roll, the devil’s music.” From the shocked look in their eyes, maybe someone was thinking that, but knew better than to spout it out in front of fiery Dr. Sam. This is the same church that was afraid that the Laotians and Vietnamese would take over their congregation while they were nestled comfortably in the middle of Little Saigon in Orange County. Surprised?

Now you may not always agree with all of Bono’s politics or even any of his theology. I certainly do not, but I did feel passionate enough to echo his sentiment (maybe not in quite such colorful words). I totally agree with Bono’s heart for the poor. His context justified his language.

In response to those Baptist friends, I sometimes wonder which Bible they have been reading. I can imagine the fiery “Saint” Paul rattling and humming off a few colorful words himself when writing his letters. Try Phil. 3.8 for the “S- word” in Greek. I kid you not. Maybe I should write a book on cuss words in the Bible because there’re not a few, and I bet you it will sell. Then, I can retire. Don’t worry. I won’t do it because I don’t want to retire that early, and you can’t get rid of me so easily. Lest you think this is a yet another off-the-wall rant from the crazy professor, you ought to try looking in the Greek and Hebrew. No telling what side benefits you may derive from reading God’s word in the original language. Maybe that’s why some of my students are afraid to take the languages. They’re afraid of the “cussing Holy Bible.” To add to Eccl. 3.1-8, maybe there’s a place in there for “a time to cuss.” Now I’m really kidding (or am I?). What then is the “small stuff”? The small stuff is the religion we made in our own image to make ourselves feel good about ignoring the bigger and more major issue that the Bible repeatedly dealt with.

What exactly did the Bible deal with more than the F-word or S-word Bono or Paul (gasp) might have uttered once in a while?

In all seriousness, Bono’s concern for social justice is the heart of the Bible. If we compare the command not to use foul language (strictly speaking, one verse James 3.10) to condemnation of God and Jesus against those who oppress the poor, those who are prideful, those who use politics in God’s kingdom for their own power and gain, those who live hypocritically, those who ignore the needs of others for their own greed, and those who commit sin against their neighbors, the F-word is the least of our problems.[1] How many have been prideful this week? How many have not given to God His share of time, talents and treasures? Yet, many take the dominant ethics of the Bible with such a flippant attitude, while making a mountain of Christian ethics from a mole hill of verses. Bono’s prophetic cry, though laced with the F-word, is often more biblical than many feeble attempts at the pulpit across our nation every Sunday morning. If anyone even tries to honestly exegete the Prophets, he would sound more like Bono than my friends whose message is simply not to use the F-word. Such is evangelicalism.

If anyone has ever been to South Africa, they can see with their own eyes the effects of colonialism. It is not pretty. It has done irreparable damage to the gospel and the African family structure as well as tribal relationships. In the University of the Free State where I once visited and lectured, there was not one local black divinity student in the audience. It is not so much that they don’t have the heart to serve God. Lots of our African brothers and sisters love to serve the Lord. However, their educational setback will take years to catch up due to apartheid. It is not that many of my white European colleagues in the university do not care to train up black divinity students to be ordained in the Dutch Reformed Church, they simply have to (rightly) keep up academic standards. It is not the fault of my white colleagues, but the beautiful environment of those lecture halls is worlds apart from those who are in real need of the gospel.

This focus on Bono’s F-word (or any other trivially distasteful acts) is more of an indicator of evangelical decay. For popular evangelicalism, the “evangel” is more about social respectability than social responsibility. It is more about “I’ve done enough (because I don’t use the F-word)” than about “what else can I do?” Oftentimes, Christianity is reduced to “don’t drink, don’t dance (don’t cuss) and don’t hang out with girls that do.” This popular form of religion sells the gospel way short till there is no more good news left, other than a bunch of petty do’s and don’ts. Moral legalism has often distracted the evangelical Church from her real responsibility to the world. Many evangelicals are more concerned that they do not use the F-word than about the condition of the world. While Bono continues to talk to international dignitaries, these irrelevant Christians talk ABOUT Bono (or Rick Warren or anyone else who’s trying to make an impact beyond our comfortable but dysfunctional little upper middle class first-world evangelical community). What this underwhelming evangelical Christianity needs is a swift and hard kick in the posterior, even if it takes Bono’s F-word to do it.

If Christianity is reduced to cultural respectability (aka the small stuff), I think we should stop calling ourselves “Christian” (not that there’s anything wrong with that term, but that it has lost its true meaning of being a witness per Acts 11.26) and start being REAL Christ followers because Christianity has turned into a load of “BS (i.e. bachelor of science).” Can I say that?

This week, Mike Huckabee has made a few people angry because he missed the “big stuff” (aka the big picture) and replaced it with the “small stuff” (aka the religion in our own image). His context is also wrong. Now is not the time to talk about pet issues. A bunch of people died and bunch more of other related to the victims are suffering unnamable grief. Context, in this case, is part of the big stuff. This is not the time or the place to discuss his pet issues.

What is the bottom line? I think it has to do with how every Christian cares about the way every other Christian thinks about him or her. I know this inside and out because I was rocked in the cradle of evangelicalism. We have created such an artificial culture of hypocrisy that only upper middle class respectability now defines popular evangelicalism. It is more superficial than substantial. It is more about face than about grace. It is more a civil religion than an authentic faith. The difference between the two is like night and day. Yet, many treat the inferior as the superior. This present pretence of morality is more about holier-than-thou-ness (i.e. self-righteousness) than holiness. Our focus on this appearance of morality is in fact disgustingly and remarkably immoral. It makes us look more like whitewashed tombstones than white robed saints. Words only have meaning in context. Some can use religious vocabulary to do violence while others use coarse words to make peace. Sadly, unlike Bono, Huckabee dropped his “god-speak” into the context of a bunch of underaged murder victims, nearly causing more grief than comfort. In a sense, Huckabee is the anti-Bono in this case. I conclude by asking with Bono’s lyrics in “Silver and Gold”, “Am I bugging you? Don’t mean to bug ya.” Keep on bugging, Bono! Words matter… timing also.

[1] For a serious discussion on obscene speech, see Jeremy Hultin, Ethics of Obscene Speech in Early Christianity and Its Environment (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

I’ve read with great discomfort today as many Religious Right leaders have come out to connect the Newtown massacre to their pet issues of gay marriage, abortion and school prayer. Many preachers still have to take a theological lesson from the incarnation. The Advent Sunday of Joy, this last Sunday, has a lot to teach us about our pulpits. While you can’t get complete joy in this, you have to think about hope that may slowly emerge when we reflect on the the incarnation. Perhaps we need to step back to the first candle of hope and retrace our steps, since we aren’t quite ready for joy. Yet, for some, the pulpit is the turret from which the preacher fires his cannon shots. They call it the prophetic voice. I call it emotional abuse. From the perspective of the incarnation, the pulpit is the opposite of the cannon turret.

When we look at the harshest preaching of Jesus and the most influential apostle Paul, it was directed at the religious community, whether to some of the hypocritical religious leaders or to its own community, rather than to those “lost sinners.” It was not pointing a condemning finger at the non-religious world. We seem to have the order flipped around these days.

From the Newtown event, we need someone to tell us that this world is full of sin and evil as much as someone informing us that the earth is round. The fact is, the world has always been broken. It was not broken this weekend. When Jesus came, his world was also awful. Evil took over Herod and he killed a bunch of children while covering up the historical record so much so that critical theologians consider the entire slaughter a made-up tale. The Newtown event tells us that such evil is very possible. It also tells of a broken world, not just for the families that have lost the little ones (it still saddens me to think about it as a parent), but also for the brilliant young man who had somehow found enough madness to shoot innocent children. At this point, we do not know what triggered this young man to do such an evil thing. Was he not a normal child once much like those he killed? We live in a very broken world. The same brokenness has not gotten worse as some of the judgmental Religious Right leaders seem to have us believe. The world was always broken even when Jesus came.

So, if we’re Christians, why did Jesus come? Jesus came as God’s gesture to reach out to a broken world. When God saw all this awful stuff going on in Jesus’ time, He didn’t say, “Well, you sinful morons, let me teach you a lesson by bombing you guys.” Instead, He sent Jesus. If the incarnation teaches anything, it teaches grace. When the pulpit faces the outside, it must always show the grace of the incarnation. How many of our visitors in our church would feel grace yesterday after such a horrific weekend? Going on a rampage about pet peeve moral issues on the Advent Sunday of Joy does violence to the gospel. Sure, the pulpit can be equally harsh in its pronouncement against its own faith community the way Jesus and Paul preached against certain “insider” problems (e.g. hypocrisy, oppression and ignoring of the poor etc.). A deeper question, for which I have no answer, to ask is this. Why is the order often flipped around in many evangelical pulpits? Why do some conservative pulpits often sound so judgmental to the world while going so easy on the sins of its own faith community? THAT should be the question we ask at the moment.

I think America does not need to get right with God because it has always been a secular country. However, I think some pulpits need to get right with God this Advent. If we aren’t ready for joy, at least we can be ready for a glimmer of hope, but first we need to confront our priorities (aka our pulpit demons). Then hope and eventually (hopefully) joy will come.

By permission of my friend Chinglican who’s doing his doctorate, I repost his sermon for the Advent after the Sandy Hook incident. He speaks not expository (probably quite unlike me) but makes a characterization of John the Baptist in response to the tragic situation. Please follow him as well.

[I did not preach today, and I do not envy those who must. However, in solidarity with those who mourn and those who must preach despite their mourning, this is what I might have said. I was also very affected by the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber’s sermon on the Aurora shootings.God, come to my assistance; Lord, make haste to help me.]

(Readings are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C: Zeph. 3.14-18a; Is. 12; Phil. 4.4-7; Lk. 3.10-18)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Third Sunday of Advent is, as my wife likes to say, the day to light the pink candle. It is not without reason that this Sunday is called Gaudete Sunday, a Sunday when the readings, the music, the church decorations, and even the pink candle are supposed to be gaudy. It’s supposed to be a party, a day of joy. And thus, our first reading in Zephaniah 3, like our responsorial psalm from Isaiah 12, calls on the daughter of Zion to rejoice, for the Lord has saved her from her enemies; in our epistle from Philippians 4, St. Paul tells the church at Philippi to rejoice—‘and I will say it again, rejoice!’

If only we could.

Can we indeed say that the Lord has been the saviour from our enemies when 26 people, 20 of them children, are gunned down mercilessly in an elementary school in a Connecticut town? Can we rejoice with St. Paul when, in a completely unrelated incident, 23 kids are stabbed in a school in China? Are we even allowed to light the pink candle and be gaudy when we have endured our nineteenth such shooting spree in America in five years, countless such murders in China, and untold accounts of violence worldwide?

Compounding our grief is the way that these horrors have immediately been politicized. Barack Obama may have responded more as a parent than as a president, wiping away tears from his eyes as he read his statement on the Connecticut shootings, but already, our civil discourse from the left is screaming for gun control, from the right is raging for concealed carry firearms, and from the cynical is wondering how anyone in good conscience could manipulate grief on this level for politics. Our theological discourse is no better. We have heard from the theologians and pastors who have no words or answers for our innumerable questions, and we have heard from those who have an answer that God in his sovereign will did not stop the bloodshed. We want to celebrate the heroes—already, our Facebook and Twitter feeds are flooded by stories of teachers and the principal who sacrificed their lives for their students, and we do call them ‘heroes,’ except when we do, our voices choke with grief and we cannot actually say it, reframe the situation, and think positive about what hope we must have for humanity now.

No. We are not joyful. We are not even pretending to be. We have had enough.

We preachers have been told that the task of preaching after such tragedy is difficult, if not impossible. We are told that the congregation wants us to be empathetic, to simply understand, to keep our mouths shut. Yet we are preachers, we are also told, and so we must say something. Whether our theology is that we are shepherds over a flock, fellow pilgrims in the midst of the people of God, or somewhere in the middle of that continuum, the fact remains that, as much as it seems that no one wants any of us to say anything, our liturgy requires that we speak.

But what do we say—indeed, what can we say?—especially in the midst of such senseless violence on Gaudete Sunday?

The Gospel tells us that the crowds asked John the Baptizer, ‘What shall we do?’ The crowds asked John the Baptizer what they should do. We are told that the crowds consisted of a motley crew of people, tax collectors and Roman soldiers in tow. The crowds, we are told, are not innocent of violence, passive victims of Roman occupation with its culture of violence. The crowds, as implied from last week’s Gospel earlier in Luke 3, know very well the level of violence it takes to maintain Roman colonization in Palestine. Pontius Pilate was known to violently repress, if not pre-empt, any sign of Jewish identity politics. And this was just an example: we haven’t talked about the political intrigue at multiple levels of the colonial government managed by the Herods and the Temple rulers. The violence then was as senseless as the violence now. And yet, with collaborators with these regimes of violence like tax collectors and Roman soldiers in the crowds, the crowds, it is implied, are very much collaborators with regimes of terror, empires of murderous liberation, cultures of death that fetishize weaponry for the recreation of bloodlust.

John is the voice crying out in the wilderness. Like us, John had to preach, even in the midst of a senseless culture of violence. Attuned to the injustice of the senseless violence they have experienced as well as their own complex complicity in it, the crowds ask John: ‘What shall we do?’

What does John tell them to do?

Does John give the socially and politically conservative answer, that what is simply needed is a conversion of the individual heart, that weapons control is useless because the central problem of personal repentance has not been solved?

Does John give the concerned parental response, that the private sphere is under threat from such violence, that public safety will soon be a myth if such violence continues, and that for the sake of our children, we must enact some policy to make sure this never happens again?

Does John give the ‘I have no words to say’ sermon, a reflection on mystery in the midst of grief, that God weeps with the wretched of the earth but really has nothing better to do than to cry with you as you are terrorized?

No. None of the above.

In the midst of such colonization, terror, and violence, John’s answer is a call to radical hospitality. If you have two coats, he says, give one to your neighbour. If you have food and your neighbour doesn’t, share it. If you are a tax collector, don’t collect extra tips. If you are a soldier, you are not to use brute force, extortion, and the secrecy of lies to get your way.

John’s call to action is cryptic. It is as if in the midst of the senseless violence in both first-century Palestine and the twenty-first century globalized world, John is calling us to a defiant hospitality. In the midst of violence, the Church defies the common sense of private security that we need to batten down the hatches and arm ourselves for safety. No, John says, we open our doors wider.

John the Baptizer is saying what our other readings for Gaudete Sunday are saying. Rejoice, St. Paul says, again I say it, rejoice, because hope against hope, sending your petitions with thanksgiving to God, the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding and defies the common sense of anxiety in the midst of this crooked and perverse generation will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Rejoice, the prophets Zephaniah and Isaiah say, for God is our savior from our enemies, he has removed our judgment, he sings over us now as songs are sung at festivals. Rejoice. Be hospitable. Open wide your gates, daughter of Zion.

These acts of joy run counter to our feelings of horror, despair, anger, and rage at the events of violence that we have so viscerally experienced this week. Our common sense tells us that we should be taking up arms for private security. Our righteous anger should move us to call on the state to save us from our ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ ways. Our emotional sensitivities know that any display of joy will be viewed as insensitive and that any mention of gaudiness should be regarded as distasteful.

How can we be so stupid?

Because, John goes on, someone is coming, mightier than he is, bringing a baptism by fire and the Holy Spirit. Someone is coming, the thongs of whose sandals he is unworthy to untie, to actually do some justice, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to actually set the world right.

He is coming, John says, but as we look forward to his return, he isn’t back yet. So yes, we should grieve at this present darkness. Let your voices choke as you remember Connecticut, as you think of China, as you contemplate the imperial cultures of death that have the world in its grip. Yes, we should have no words to say to explain the horror. Yes, do be angry, rage at the senselessness. But as the people of God, in our sorrow and in our anger, in our disbelief at the level of injustice that has been perpetrated this week, in the activism for justice that will no doubt rightfully ensue from this, we also defy the common sense that calls us to take up arms and protect ourselves. No, hope against hope, we declare with our actions that this is indeed a time to act, but with the radical acts of hospitality, to let our rejoicing not be empty words, but shocking deeds of expansive welcome to the stranger, solidarity with the hungry and the naked, and renunciation of the ways of extortion and greed.

Today is the Third Sunday of Advent. Jesus is coming, winnowing fork in hand, to sort out the wheat from the chaff. We grieve with the grieving, mourn with the mourning, are in solidarity with those who cry out against the senseless violence of this week, are stopped silent in our attempts to give simple answers about just what happened. And yet with tears in our eyes, choking in our voices, and anger to the depths of our bowels, we rejoice defiantly by flinging open our hearts and our doors to welcome the stranger and love our neighbour. We do this because the one who holds the winnowing fork in his hand came to live and die as one of us. He stretched out his arms upon the cross, a victim of the very senseless brutality and injustice against which we rage today. His disciples, once the followers of the same John the Baptizer who had proclaimed this radical hospitality, locked themselves in an upper room for personal security, fleeing, hiding, defending themselves against the unjust, horrible violence that took their Lord’s life. And yet, hope against hope, defiant against all common sense, confounding all sense of reality, in a story that will strike us in our grief as the stupidest wishful thinking imaginable if only it didn’t happen, Jesus walked through those locked doors into that room and said to them, ‘It is I. Do not be afraid.’

Cry out with joy and gladness, then, for among you is the great and Holy One of Israel, Jesus Christ who has died, is risen, and will come again. Lift up your hearts; let us give thanks to the Lord our God; let us share in the joy of the Triune God; let us love our neighbours with the expansive love of Jesus Christ who comes to us even now in our grief, in our horror, in our confusion, and in our anger, and says to us—indeed, hope against hope, he calls us by name and says, ‘It is I. I have risen. Do not be afraid.’

O God, we pray then, we have heard with our ears, our ancestors have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old; you with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted; you afflicted the peoples, but them you set free. Yet you have rejected us and abased us, and have not gone out with our armies. You have made us like sheep for slaughter, and have scattered us among the nations. Because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love. I believe; help thou my unbelief. O Lord, in you have I trusted; let me never be confounded.